The information was shared on message boards, email lists, Facebook and Twitter.

Thousands of times, photos and descriptions of the seven missing horses were spread across the Internet.

One week after thieves entered a pasture and stole the equestrians and tack — valued at $40,000 — the animals were reunited with their owner.

The safe return came through the efforts of a local non-profit organization that specializes in finding stolen and missing horses.

Debi Metcalfe, the Shelby woman who spearheads Stolen Horse International, said a woman from Winston-Salem reported her animals missing on April 29.

“I went out there to pick up my equipment and my tack and my fencing supplies because I was going to move them the next day,” said Amanda Bechtel, co-owner of the seven horses. “I went out there and had discovered it had all been stolen.”

Bechtel said her immediate thoughts were fear and concern.

“Who had them? Were they being taken care of? If you’re not a horse person ... it’s not going to take you long to kill one,” she said. “They’re these great big huge animals ... you look at them and think they’re so big and strong, but they’re really fragile animals.”

‘Infinite number’

Shortly after being reported as missing, Stolen Horse International, also known as NetPosse.com, issued an alert. Metcalfe said the alert is sent out to the thousands of volunteers on a mailing list and those volunteers share the information by email, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

The information is disseminated from North Carolina to California.

“It’s an infinite number almost,” Metcalfe said.

And sometimes, it yields results.

“There was a lead that came in off the alert we sent out,” Metcalfe said. “We send these out to thousands and thousands of people and they saw the information we sent out.”

Someone passed along information about the horses’ whereabouts to law enforcement.

“They worked the lead and eventually found where the horses were,” Metcalfe said.

The investigation is ongoing, and an arrest of the horse thieves is expected to be made over the next few days.